


for you, i will withstand the pain

by AlexiaBlackbriar13



Series: s7 pregnant felicity fics [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: But Not Much, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extremely Heavy Angst, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Adrian Chase, Pregnancy, Pregnant Felicity Smoak, References to 5x17 and 5x18, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, There's A Little Bit Of Fluff, Time Travel, read with caution, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 20:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18156377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiaBlackbriar13/pseuds/AlexiaBlackbriar13
Summary: Strange feelings of dread and hope associated with his baby's ultrasound photo prompt Oliver to make a crucial trip back in time to stop his past 2017 self from making a decision that threatens everything he's built with his family and by extension, the universe itself.





	for you, i will withstand the pain

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a couple of weeks ago and honestly was too scared to post it because it is Pretty Heavy and i know people will Not Like It and yell at me... but monisha has given me the Courage. so thank you monisha x
> 
>  **PLEASE** read the trigger warnings in the tags.  
>  **PLEASE** make your own decision to read this or not, based on those tags.

From the moment that Felicity told him she was pregnant and gifted him with that first ultrasound photo, Oliver had started having the weirdest feelings of dread and hope that he’d seen this photo before. That bright blob of white standing out against an ocean of black and grey had triggered something in his memory, but he didn’t understand precisely what.

It took him a week or so to figure it out. He spent a lot of time cooking new healthy foods for Felicity to try and sitting writing notes in his current diary, while skimming through his ones from the last couple of years. He finally found an entry from late March in 2017, probably one of the darkest periods of his life considering it was after Adrian had tortured and broke him, that stole his breath away.

He _had_ seen the ultrasound photograph before.

Did that mean everything from that dangerous night had actually happened? Did that mean he hadn’t been hallucinating or dreaming? If Oliver had been imagining it all, then the ultrasound photo wouldn’t have looked the same, would it? He glanced over at himself at the mirror, noting the length of his hair and stubble, the lines around his eyes and how his hardened, emotionless warrior exterior had softened after marriage and raising a teenage son. He didn’t like to think that the man in front of him looked familiar - because how could he? - but Oliver couldn’t help but get the faintest feeling that he had seen himself look like this before; not recently, but in fact two years ago.

He decided that he couldn’t risk it, considering what specific night in 2017 it was that he thought connected to all of these strange emotions and thoughts.

He called Barry. “I need a favor.”

“Whatever, whenever,” Barry immediately responded. “Although I’m a little short on time at the moment.”

“It will only take an hour or two,” Oliver told him, “If you even agree to what I’m going to ask for.”

“I can’t disagree if you don’t tell me.”

Oliver’s hand clenched around his cell phone, his knuckles turning white. He stared down at the ultrasound photo of his and Felicity’s baby in his free hand, brushing his fingers over the dog-eared edges. It had been less than a week and the photo paper was already dirty and scuffed from how often Oliver had been looking at it. Swallowing, he requested quietly, “I need you to take me back in time, to March 30th 2017.”

“That would be crossing your own personal timeline -”

“I know, Barry,” the archer interrupted. “But - this is going to sound crazy, but there’s somewhere I desperately need to be. The entire timeline as we know it could be threatened if I don’t turn up somewhere to talk to somebody.”

Eventually, Barry agreed, somewhat reluctantly. Oliver’s heart was palpitating inside his chest as he thought about what he was about to do. He tried to distract himself by going to change clothes, waiting for pangs of recognition to set in before choosing items to wear. He ended up in dark wash jeans, a t-shirt, and a dark red Henley. Frowning at himself in the mirror, he was struck over the head again with that strange sensation of having seen himself like this before.

Felicity strolled in at that point, grumbling under her breath about her feet already hurting and feeling cold. Ten weeks pregnant now, the morning sickness, headaches, and breathlessness were certainly tiring her out. All of the research Oliver had done suggested that her hormones just needed to settle down before her more severe symptoms faded away, which would happen within the next couple of weeks.

“How are my two beautiful girls doing today?” Oliver murmured, kneeling down to press a kiss to her now slightly swollen belly, gently stroking his hands over the firm bump.

“She’s the size of a cherry now,” Felicity answered. She was threading her fingers through his hair, which he was growing out due to her insistence that she liked it when it was a little longer. Giving a slight tug, she complained, “Why does your daughter make me need to pee so often? It’s annoying.”

 

They didn’t know that the baby was a girl yet, but both of them were pretty sure that it was. As such, they’d been calling her by the name they’d decided on - the name Oliver had chosen - Mia. “Oh, Mia’s just _my_ daughter?” Oliver raised an eyebrow.

“Only when she’s being stubborn and irritating,” Felicity huffed.

Oliver dropped another kiss on her belly before rising to his feet, searching through the closet until he found Felicity’s favorite blue sweater of his. “I’m not the only one who’s passed on stubbornness genes to her, you know.”

Felicity stuck her tongue out at him before pulling the sweater on, snuggling into it. “I’m going to take a nap,” she said. “Because I am pregnant with your baby and she is wearing me out by abusing my insides with all her parkour inside my uterus.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” he commented. “I’m going out for a couple of hours, but I’ll be back in time to wake you up for dinner.”

Clambering into the bed as Oliver held the covers back for her, Felicity asked curiously, “Where are you going?”

“I’m meeting with Barry,” he said honestly.

Felicity immediately sat bolt upright, her eyes wide and arms wrapped around her stomach protectively. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “Is the world in danger again? What is it this time? Aliens again? Invaders from another Earth? From another dimension?”

“Hey,” he cut her off with a reassuring kiss. “It’s okay. There’s no upcoming apocalypse to worry about. We’re just meeting for drinks.” It was a lie, but Oliver wasn’t worried about what he was actually going to do. Plus, while he was certain Felicity would definitely understand if he managed to explain it to her, the archer knew it would be too difficult to put into words. “I promise I’ll text you updates.”

Felicity tapped her promise ring, the emerald studded in the center flanked by two diamonds sparkling in the light. “Witnessed and noted.”

He kissed her stomach, right over where he imagined their baby to be growing and thriving within her. “Try not to cause your mommy too much trouble, Mia,” he murmured. “She gets very offended when she gets morning sickness but it’s not in the morning, you know.”

Peppering kisses over his wife’s face, Oliver made sure she was comfortable and the lights were dim before heading out of the apartment, walking towards the bar a couple of blocks away he’d agreed to meet Barry at. His chest felt tight from anxiety and he was rubbing his fingers and thumbs together warily. What he was about to do was rather nerve-wracking and something the archer had never thought he’d be doing in his life.

Barry was waiting at the bar on a stool with two IPA beers sitting in front of him. “Hey,” he greeted Oliver with a grin. When the archer didn’t smile back, his expression grew more morose. “You’re not happy.”

“As I said, there’s somewhere I need to be,” Oliver replied simply.

“March 30th 2017,” Barry nodded. He eyed Oliver cautiously. “That’s before the whole island blowing up thing, right?”

Oliver took his seat on the stool and pushed the beer the speedster had bought for him towards him with a single finger. He needed to keep a clear head for this. Since alcohol had no effect on Barry, he finished off his own beer and stared on Oliver’s without any delay.

“Yes, but I’m not going to interfere with that. Actually, I’m going to make sure it does happen,” Oliver told him. “There’s a possibility that… _somebody_ might do something in the past that will change everything that’s happened since 2017 and all of our lives, and I have to make sure that it doesn’t happen.”

Barry stared at him scrutinizingly for a second or two, then shrugged and downed Oliver’s beer all at once. “Alright, I trust you,” he said. “Let’s go. I have to warn you, time travel is not nice. I’m going to have to carry you, and you’re going to feel as if your entire body is being sucked into a vacuum and imploding. Just wait until I’m a good six feet away from you before you throw up, okay?”

It felt even worse than what Barry had described. Time travel at super speed felt like being squeezed through a capillary tube while being turned inside out at the same time. Oliver had his eyes squeezed shut the entire time as he fought back the urge to vomit. By the time Barry had slowed down - and the time travel must have occurred - Oliver was all too eager to bolt out of his arms and empty his stomach behind the nearest dumpster. The speedster had landed them behind a dark alleyway in the Glades that the archer recognized as being not too far away from the bunker.

“Oliver, man, I’m so sorry, I tried to smooth the ride out -”

“Don’t apologize,” the archer gasped, wiping his mouth and straightening up unsteadily. “Just tell me that we made it.”

“We did,” Barry confirmed, brushing himself down. His clothes appeared slightly singed and his shoes were smoking, but he wasn’t actually on fire. Oliver had to quickly check himself for any flames, and was relieved to find none. Kneeling down, he picked up a half-soaked newspaper from the ground, from where it was lying in a puddle. “Looks like we did, anyway.” The speedster checked his watch. “Yup. March 30th, 2017, just after 10pm.” Seeing Oliver’s questioning look, he told him, “Cisco made it, it automatically adjusts the date and time after time travel.”

“10pm?” Oliver echoed, alarm bells ringing in his head. “I need to get to the Foundry. Now.”

“The Foundry? You mean the Arrow Cave?”

“It’s not called that.”

“I thought it was destroyed by the police? Don’t you want to go to the bunker instead -?”

“The Foundry.”

“Let’s go then.”

The Foundry was pitch black when they arrived at the back entrance, exactly how Oliver remembered it. Barry gave him a sharp nod before speeding off with a zip of yellow lightning, leaving the archer alone. It felt strange walking through their old, abandoned hide-out, especially as the Foundry itself had been sold off when Thea had left, and now sat empty in the Glades. Their old equipment lay trashed everywhere, with snapped arrows littering the floor and smashed glass scattered on the benches and worktables. He startled when the emergency lighting switched on, bathing him in greenish hues.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Oliver paused, knowing he was in a position where the person who had just spoken couldn’t see him quite yet - it was his footsteps clicking on the floor that had alerted them to his presence.

“I’m exactly where I need to be,” he responded back steadily.

There was silence, and then a tired, hoarse voice replied, “Guess I can add hallucinations to my list of symptoms then, on top of tremors, hyperventilation, and dizziness.”

Oliver shook his head with a heavy sigh. Very slowly, he began crossing the Foundry, approaching the medical area that was still bathed in darkness. Shattered syringes and drug vials crunched under his shoes. He made sure to keep his movements sleek and measured, as to not startle or scare the person he was approaching, as he knew that one wrong move could resist in a disastrous outcome, especially considering what night it was. He gave warning that he was going to switch on the lights by grasping the lever and pausing, checking it was alright. When no protest came, he cranked it down so brightness flooded the room. Oliver closed his eyes and frowned, his eyes stinging, but the other person in the room had a much worse reaction, flinching and recoiling away into the shadows as if the light had burned him.

It was like staring into a mirror.

Because his own face and eyes were peering back at him.

If somebody were to cry ‘doppelganger’ at that point, they wouldn’t have been exactly incorrect. But this was time travel - infinitely more complicated - so the most accurate description of this situation was to say that Oliver was confronting his younger self.

This Oliver, two years younger, looked like a train wreck. There was no better way to say it. His skin was pale and gaunt, his eyes were dull and glossy with unshed tears, and there was a weariness and incessant exhaustion about him that entirely explained the gun sitting in his lap and the blade he was holding against his left wrist. Younger Oliver’s hair was long and messy - god, had he really allowed his hair to get that long after the island? Felicity liked it longer, but they weren’t together at this point in 2017, so that wasn’t an excuse - and the simple sweats and t-shirt he was dressed in were covered in dirt and grime, and in case of the t-shirt, fresh blood, from the wounds inflicted on him by Chase opening up.

It was alarming how little Oliver truly remembered from this night.

The night he’d come back to the Foundry with the intent to kill himself.

“You don’t want to do that,” Oliver told his younger self seriously, eyes flicking down to the knife and the gun. “Trust me.”

“Maybe I do,” younger Oliver said, and it was tragic how sad and quiet he sounded. As if he’d given up on all light and happiness in his life - as if he’d given up on life altogether. “And you’re a hallucination being produced by my subconsciousness, so you _know_ that I do.”

“You don’t. Deep down, you don’t,” he shook his head. “I know precisely what you are feeling and thinking right now - that there’s no point to anything anymore, that you don’t deserve your friends or family or even your own life, that you’re helpless and hopeless and this is the only option - because I _was_ you. Chase tore you to shreds, physically, mentally and emotionally, and you’re struggling to pick up the pieces. But you’re wrong: this is not the only option. Taking your own life is not going to be the solution to any of this, Oliver.”

“It might not be a solution, but it will be an ending,” younger Oliver murmured. His hands were shaking now, the blade slipping against his wrist and drawing blood.

Oliver winced as he felt a sharp pain on his left arm, and glanced down to see a faint, thin line of a scar there, red and inflamed, where there hadn’t been a scar before. Younger Oliver noticed his flinch and tilted his head sideways at him, watching him intensely like a predator observing his prey. When he saw the new scar appearing on Oliver’s arm, he _smiled_.

“I’m going to tell you again,” Oliver said calmly, knowing that raising his voice or getting angry could easily spook his younger self. “This is not the only option, it is not a solution, and you do _not_ want to do this.” Younger Oliver sighed tiredly, looking away. He was getting bored with this conversation. Although the bloodied knife had slipped from his hand to clatter to the floor beside him, staining the ground with crimson, the gun still sat on top of his thighs, a very present threat. Oliver switched to a new tactic. “What about the team? Felicity, John, Dinah, Rene? Do you think that this is what John would want? What _Felicity_ would want?”

“Felicity doesn’t want me,” his younger self whispered, resigned. “And even if she did, she deserves somebody better. Someone who isn’t a murderer and a monster.”

“Felicity fell in love with us despite knowing that we’ve killed people,” he countered gently. “She knows everything about us, Oliver, the good and the bad. She’s accepted every part of us.”

“Then she’s being stupid. I don’t deserve to be accepted, or loved, or even tolerated. If she truly knew everything about me, then she would know that I’m a monster that deserves to be put down.”

“Hey,” Oliver said sharply. Younger Oliver swallowed and looked up at him. “I know you are hurting and upset, but you don’t insult Felicity. Ever.”

“My own hallucination scolding me for being an idiot. That’s a new one.” Younger Oliver blinked down at his hands, that were dripping red. “I wonder how long it will take for you to fade as I bleed out.”

This had been one of the darkest points in Oliver’s life: the night after Adrian Chase had released him after a week of torture, where he’d insisted on being left alone. His loneliness, misery, and pain had consumed him, and driven him to purely suicidal intentions. He didn’t remember much of that night specifically - he couldn’t remember hallucinating at all, or his older self appearing to talk him out of killing himself - but he could recall Felicity arriving just as he’d decided that taking his own life wasn’t worth it, and her sitting with him until dawn, tending to his wounds and soothing his battered and broken soul.

He checked the time. It had gone ten thirty, and Felicity had yet to arrive.

He decided to play his trump card.

“That future you’ve thought about so many times before with Felicity, you really want to lose the chance of having that by killing yourself?” he asked.

Younger Oliver shook his head. “Any future I’ve dreamed up isn’t possible anymore. To want a family with Felicity, with William and more children and happiness… it’s naive and foolish. Unthinkable.”

“That’s what Felicity said about her and us being together,” Oliver told him. “And yet it happened.” Younger Oliver scoffed, muttering under his breath about how he’d ruined that too. Running a hand through his hair, Oliver crouched down, reaching into his pocket to pull out the ultrasound photo. “I’m going to show you something. To prove that the future you want isn’t as impossible as you think it is. You aren’t going to remember this properly. But if it stops you from making a decision tonight that you’ll regret, then it’s worth it.” He extended his arm, offering him the photograph.

Younger Oliver used his right hand to take it, which Oliver was grateful for, because he didn’t want his own blood all over the ultrasound photo of baby Mia. The archer watched anxiously as his younger self sat utterly still, staring down at the photo for a couple of minutes.

“It’s a white smudge,” Younger Oliver eventually said, with a careless shrug.

“I take offense to that,” Oliver raised an eyebrow. “That’s your and Felicity’s future baby. _My_ baby.”

“Felicity would never have a child with me,” Younger Oliver shook his head. But he didn’t hand the photo back. He was stroking his thumbs over the white blob. His hands had stopped trembling, and his breathing had calmed. “She wouldn’t want me anywhere near a baby.”

He took a seat on the cold floor about a foot away from his past self after brushing away the glass, gritting his teeth against the ache of his old, cracked bones and strained joints. “She will and she does. She’s of the opinion that we’re going to be an amazing father, actually.”

This time, when Younger Oliver glanced up at him, there was a hint of hesitation and fear in his eyes. He reached out with his left hand and prodded Oliver in the shoulder, leaving a fingerprint of blood behind. When he realized that the person in front of him was real, his younger self froze and then slowly withdrew his hand.

“You’re not a hallucination,” he said dumbly.

“No, I’m not,” Oliver replied. “I’m you, two years in the future. I’m from 2019.”

“I survive until 2019?” Younger Oliver repeated, as if living that long as a foreign concept to him. “And Felicity and I are… together? Pregnant?”

“Ten weeks pregnant, married for a year and three months. And twenty-two days,” he added on the end, to increase the accuracy.

His younger self finally handed back the ultrasound photo. Oliver tucked it away safely, so it rested over his heart in its pocket. “Aren’t you threatening the timeline by telling me this?”

“ _You_ are threatening the timeline by doing _that_.” Oliver motioned down at the bloodied knife and the gun.

“But there’s no other…” Younger Oliver trailed off, his words stuck in his throat. _No other option, no other way, no other solution._ And yet here Oliver sat in front of him, from two years in the future, a complete contradiction to those statements. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”

“I know. But unfortunately, you have to. And the next two years are going to be rough, don’t get me wrong, but what’s waiting for you on the other side of this war is a reward. And you have to fight to get it.” He leaned forward and placed a hand on his younger self’s knee tenderly. Younger Oliver’s breath hitched. “You said two years ago - four years ago for me - that you didn’t want to die down here.” He motioned around to the Foundry. “That’s why you came here tonight - because _poetic irony_. But you need to understand, if you die here tonight, the future you want with Felicity will be gone. The Foundry is where the two of us - the two of _you_ \- fell in love, and started hoping for a relationship and an ever after. Don’t let it be the place where that love and hope vanishes.”

Younger Oliver was crying freely now, nodding along to what he was saying. Determining that it was now safe for him to attempt to take the weapons away, Oliver shifted so he was on his knees and could grasp the knife and the gun, taking them away from his younger self, who didn’t attempt to stop him.

“Stay strong,” he told his past self softly. “Don’t give up. On yourself, or on your future. I swear, if you keep fighting and hoping and _believing_ , everything will be worth it in the end.”

“But you said I don't remember any of this,” Younger Oliver said, his voice small. “So how will I know…”

“Because you won’t have to do any of this alone.”

“Oliver!?” Felicity’s frantic voice echoed through the Foundry, from the top of the metal staircase across the room. “Oliver, are you here? Please.”

Ten minutes late, but simultaneously, just on time.

“She’ll be by your side the whole time,” he told his younger self with a grin, standing and stretching out. “And no matter what happens, what you do or what you think of yourself… she’s always going to love you, Oliver. Because you’re never going to stop loving her.” He cast a quick glance behind him at Felicity’s rapidly approaching footsteps. “I have to go now. I can’t let her see me.”

“Thank you,” his younger self whispered, his voice cracking from emotion.

“Don’t fuck this up,” he pointed at his past self in warning. “Don’t pull a Barry and change the gender of my baby, please.”

That actually made Younger Oliver laugh, but it was cut off with a choked moan of pain. His younger self slumped, unconscious, and his head hit the brick wall with a thump. That whack on the back of his head would cause a minor concussion and create uncertainty when he woke up over whether or not everything that had just happened was real. Hastily moving away, Oliver hid behind the corner as he watched a younger Felicity sprint up to the younger Oliver, kneeling and patting his face desperately, only exhaling in relief when he stirred and murmured her name and a faint apology.

Oliver left the Foundry after one last look back, to see younger Felicity caressing younger Oliver’s cheek gently with one hand and wrapping cloth from her torn-off sleeve around his sliced wrist with the other. He waited in the back alley of the building for the speedster to come back to collect him, wiping tears away. To think that he might have killed himself back in 2017 and destroyed the chance to devote his life to loving Felicity and raising a family with her was devastating.

“How’d it go?” Barry questioned, appearing in the darkness with a crackle of lightning. “Are you crying!?”

“Mention this to anybody and I will make you wish that you’d never been born.”

“The crying or the time travel favor?”

“Both,” Oliver deadpanned. “The timeline’s been preserved.” He hesitated, then held his hand out for Barry to shake. He took it, looking surprised. “Thank you. We can head back to 2019 now.”

“You know there might be slight changes in our present now because of all this.”

“I know. I’m prepared for that. Take me home to Felicity, please.” _Take me home to my wife and baby._

Felicity was fast asleep in bed when he arrived back, tired and drained after everything that had just happened. He swept a loose lock of her blonde hair behind her ear so he could drop a gentle kiss on her cheek as he sank onto the mattress beside her. Felicity looked just as beautiful as she had when he’d left, and her expressed was softened by her peaceful slumber. After kissing his wife hello, Oliver crawled down so he could rest his head on top of her belly, his thumbs gently rubbing over Felicity’s hips.

Their baby was still there, safe and sound within her mother’s womb. Oliver found tears springing to his eyes again. There had been the real possibility of arriving back in 2019 to find that baby Mia had been wiped from existence somehow, but he hadn’t wanted to dwell on it at all.

“Hi, Mia,” he whispered to the small bump, his lips brushing the warm skin of Felicity’s stomach. “Daddy’s back.” The tears fell. “Daddy’s home. He’s okay.”

“Was there the chance that Daddy might not be okay?” Felicity mumbled, her eyes fluttering open and peering down at him, half-lidded from exhaustion but also concerned.

“March 30th 2017,” was all he said.

He hoped that she didn’t know the date’s significance.

But after a moment, Felicity sat up, stroking over his face and arms, her expression worried. “That’s the day after we got you back from Chase, after he tortured you for a week,” she murmured. “That’s the day I found you in the Foundry, when you…”

She didn’t want to say it.

Oliver hated that she nearly had to.

He hugged her. She embraced him back, her arms wrapped around him tightly. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to.

“Don’t leave me,” Felicity said, her voice shaking. She rested her hands over her stomach. “Don’t leave us. Please.”

“Never,” he reassured her.

_Never say never._

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed xx
> 
> feel free to yell at me, i know i deserve it
> 
> tumblr: @alexiablackbriar13  
> twitter: @lexiblackbriar


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